In this 2008 presidential cycle I have to say there have only been two candidates who've delivered major speeches on a topic that have been given the degree of media attention that really makes them truly "major."
The first was Mitt Romney's on Faith in America. It was speculated that such a speech would happen from almost the day the Romney campaign was launched. When it was officially announced, news cycles were dominated with pundits speculating what it's content and effects would be. After it was delivered in a masterfully at the Presidential Library, for days afterwards it was still being discussed. I fully expect it is a speech that will be part of political discussion for generations to come. And Mitt Romney wrote this speech himself.
The second was the one last week where Barack Obama explained why for the last 20 years he's been (and still is) a fan of this pastor Jeremiah Wright who hates America, particularly "white" America, and preaches in a flat out bigoted way. The mainstream media never saw this speech coming (they never could find any fault in their favorite Obama) but lots of people in the blogs knew this guy Wright was going to bring Obama down and it was just a matter of time. The transcripts and You Tube videos are out there now front and center. I've heard so many people who were sympathetic to Obama before tell me they could never vote for him now. So Barack did a speech to try and recover, and the media praised him for it, like you knew they would. But really, I don't think Obama doing a "major" speech on this problem is going to help him at all. From what I've seen of the speech, it wasn't really that great. For me, it raised more new questions than it answered. Unlike Mitt, Obama had a whole team of people help him write it, and apparently it went on way way way too long. Obama really must like the sound of his own voice.
Obama's going to most likely lose the Democrat nomination, and certainly will lose the general election to the Republican candidate. Obama's "major" speech, even though it is the only one I can say has gotten close to the kind of attention Mitt Romney's did, will not be more than a footnote in the obituary of Obama's run for the presidency.
I still don't fully understand what brought this to a head just now. The racist and anti-American statements have been out there since Barack Obama announced he was running. In fact, those statements are the reason why Jeremiah Wright (who was supposed to give the invocation prayer) was taken out of the program for Obama's campaign launch at the very last moment, because having Wright there would have doomed the campaign from the start.
Oprah used to go to this same preacher and decided he was too over the top for her. In Obama's case, he seemed to be more tolerant of this hate speech. It makes clear how poor Obama's judgement is, and how conflicted he must be. He's fired people from his campaign for the silliest things (calling Hillary a "monster" for example), and Wright just recently was kicked off (or forced to quit) the campaign. So why for the last 20 years has Obama been ok with this guy?
There's more to this story I'm sure. Maybe, just maybe we'll see the media probe deeper into it.
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